A conventional manufacturing apparatus will be described taking an apparatus used for a semiconductor manufacturing process, that is, a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus as an example.
The conventional semiconductor manufacturing apparatus is intended to manufacture a few types of semiconductor devices in large volume. In order to manufacture the same type of semiconductor devices in large volume at low cost, a large-diameter semiconductor wafer is desirably used. Using the large-diameter semiconductor wafer allows many semiconductor devices to be simultaneously manufactured, which facilitates manufacturing the same type of semiconductor devices in large volume, or reducing a manufacturing cost for one chip. For this reason, a conventional semiconductor manufacturing process used a very large manufacturing apparatus. Thus, a semiconductor manufacturing factory was huge, and construction and management of the factory was expensive.
In a general semiconductor manufacturing process, a sealed wafer transfer container is used in transferring a semiconductor wafer between processing apparatuses. The wafer transfer container, while housing a semiconductor wafer, is set in an antechamber of the processing apparatus. Then, the semiconductor wafer is transferred into the antechamber of a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus. Subsequently, the semiconductor wafer is transferred from the antechamber into a processing chamber, and subjected to desired deposition processing, machining processing, test processing, or the like. Then, the semiconductor wafer is transferred through the antechamber to the wafer transfer container and again housed therein.
In order to ensure sufficient yield of a semiconductor device, there is a need to prevent a semiconductor wafer from being contaminated with fine particles in a step of transferring the semiconductor wafer from the wafer transfer container through the antechamber to the processing chamber, or a step of returning the semiconductor wafer from the processing chamber through the antechamber to the wafer transfer container. As technologies for preventing such contamination, for example, technologies disclosed in the following Patent Literatures U.S. Pat. No. 4,532,970 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,939 are known.